27: Chapter 27 Recipes and Preparation

On the last day of his leave, Lu Li woke up very early.

The rain outside the window had stopped in the middle of the night. Morning light leaked through the gap in the curtains, painting a long, thin golden band of light on the floor at the foot of the bed. He propped his pillow up against the headboard and took out the document for the Sequence 8 of the Marauder Pathway from the drawer.

This document had been dug out by Old Neil from the depths of the archives; the pages had yellowed, and there were several small moth-eaten holes along the edges, but the main text was well-preserved.

A line of text was written on the cover in Hermes script — "Prometheus: Advancement Guide for Sequence 8 of the Marauder Pathway." The handwriting was as neat as printed text, but the turns of the strokes carried the characteristic hesitation of handwriting.

Lu Li flipped to the page with the formula.

Main ingredients: 5 grams of adult fire lizard tail bone powder. 30 milliliters of Shadow Grass sap.

Supplementary materials: 10 milliliters of rainwater from the night of a lunar eclipse. A pinch of black cat whisker ash. 2 grams of Time Grass root powder.

Ritual conditions: In complete Darkness, steal a ball of fire from the hands of a Beyonder with a higher Sequence than one's own. The source of the fire must be spiritual fire or the fire of a Sealed Artifact; ordinary flames are ineffective. The process of stealing must be completed without the target noticing.

He read these lines over and over again, his gaze finally landing on the term "spiritual fire."

Adult fire lizard tail bone powder can be bought on the black market. Shadow Grass is readily available on the Nighthawks Potion Room's inventory list. But spiritual fire is not easy to get.

The Tingen Nighthawks' list of Sealed Artifacts originally included a fire-attributed Sealed Artifact, codenamed "jiaowei," which was not of a high Sequence, but it had been transferred to Backlund by the Church headquarters a few years ago.

Lu Li closed the document, changed his clothes, and went downstairs.

In the lounge, Leonard was slumped on the sofa in a posture that did not fit the image of a Nighthawks elite at all. His poetry book was covering his face, his legs were propped on the sofa armrest, and his chest rose and fell evenly with his breathing. Lu Li bypassed the sofa, walked into the pantry, and took out the jar of Ceylon black tea from the cabinet.

"You're not on leave," Leonard's voice came out muffled from beneath the poetry book.

"How did you know it was me?"

"Footsteps," Leonard took the poetry book off his face, sat up, and stretched, "You walk lighter than Klein, slower than Daly, and with a lower frequency than Dunn. Everyone's footsteps in this building have characteristics, and my recognition accuracy is ninety percent."

"And the other ten percent?"

"Interfered with by Rozanne's high heels." Leonard rolled off the sofa, shuffled over to the pantry doorway in his slippers, "Did you go to the East Borough secondhand market yesterday? Klein said you were doing acting practice over there."

"Stole a printing Error. My digestion progress advanced by about five percent."

"Stole a printing Error?" Leonard blinked, "So acting as a Marauder doesn't necessarily mean stealing valuable things?"

"Stealing cleanly is more important than stealing something valuable. If the person being stolen from doesn't even notice something is missing, the digestion efficiency is highest." Lu Li poured the brewed black tea into two cups and pushed one in front of Leonard.

Leonard picked up the teacup and took a sip. "Then what do you plan to steal next? That copper comb in the evidence locker?"

"How did you know?"

"Because Old Neil took the comb out of the evidence locker yesterday, saying the corruption had been purified and it could be returned to the original owner. But the original owner was that old man at the street stall, and he can't be found. The comb is currently sitting on the temporary storage shelf in the archives, and its ownership is very tenuous." Leonard revealed a smug smile, "This information is worth a digestive biscuit. It's in the kitchen cabinet, help yourself."

Lu Li walked to the kitchen, dug out the pack of digestive biscuits from the cabinet, opened it, put them on a plate, and brought them back.

Leonard picked one up and took a bite, "What materials do you need for the Sequence 8 formula?"

"The main ingredients are adult fire lizard tail bone powder and Shadow Grass sap. These two aren't hard to get. The hard part is the ritual condition—I need to steal a ball of spiritual fire from the hands of a Beyonder with a higher Sequence than my own in complete Darkness. Tingen currently doesn't have any readily available fire-attributed Sealed Artifacts."

"jiaowei was transferred away. Among the remaining Sealed Artifacts, the only one related to fire is that silver snake key inside Chanis Gate—but the key has already been sealed by Old Neil and won't be taken out for a short while. Moreover, the key's fire attribute is very weak; its main functions are sealing and repairing."

Leonard stuffed the last bite of the biscuit into his mouth and wiped the crumbs from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, "However, spiritual fire doesn't necessarily have to come from a Sealed Artifact. Have you considered a living fire source?"

"A living fire source?"

"Beyonder creatures. Fire lizards themselves can spit spiritual fire, but a wild adult fire lizard is at least Sequence 7, you can't beat it, and there are no fire lizard habitats near Tingen. A more realistic choice is to find a Beyonder who can create spiritual fire—anyone from the 'Sun' Pathway or 'Artisan' Pathway above Sequence 7 will do. The 'alchemy fire' of the Artisan Pathway is spiritual fire specifically used for processing Beyonder materials, and both its temperature and purity are more stable than the flames spat by fire lizards."

Lu Li held his teacup and thought for a moment. There were no official members of the Artisan Pathway in the Tingen Nighthawks squad, but the Church headquarters had them.

If he went through official channels to apply to borrow alchemy fire, he would need to fill out an application form, wait in line, and then wait for headquarters to arrange for an Artisan Pathway Beyonder to travel to Tingen. The whole process would take at least a month.

"What about the black market?"

"In the Iron Cross Street street stall area, there's a merchant called 'Old Coppersmith' who specializes in processing Beyonder metals and is a Sequence 8 of the Artisan Pathway. He has alchemy fire on hand. He doesn't charge cheaply for processing materials for others privately, but it's much faster than Church channels."

Leonard put down his teacup, "His shop is behind the copperware store at the end of Old Textile Factory East Road—there's a string of rusty copper wind chimes hanging at the entrance."

"How do you know it so clearly?"

"Because the Antigonus copper comb I bought last time was appraised by him. Old Neil said he charged too high an appraisal fee and I can't go to him for reimbursement in the future."

Leonard stood up and put the empty cup into the sink, "But you can try this time. Old Coppersmith is very picky about material quality. If you can provide a main material that interests him in exchange, he might be willing to lend you the alchemy fire for free."

That morning, Lu Li found Old Neil in the Potion Room. Old Neil was sitting at the workbench, using tweezers to hold a small piece of scale sample brought back from the Underground Channel Secret Room, observing it under a phosphorescent stone lamp.

Hearing Lu Li push the door open and enter, he didn't even lift his head as he pointed to the chair opposite the workbench.

"How is your research on the Sequence 8 formula going?"

"The main ingredients require adult fire lizard tail bone powder and Shadow Grass sap. Shadow Grass can be obtained from the Potion Room's reserve, but the tail bone powder needs to be purchased. The difficult part is the ritual condition—I need to steal a ball of spiritual fire from the hands of a Beyonder with a higher Sequence than my own in complete Darkness. Leonard suggested I go to Iron Cross Street to find Old Coppersmith; he is a Sequence 8 of the Artisan Pathway and has alchemy fire."

Old Neil put down the tweezers and placed the scale sample back onto the lead tray. "Old Coppersmith's fire is indeed alchemy fire, and the purity is high enough. But he doesn't charge cheaply, and he has a rule—he doesn't accept cash payments, only barter. Have you thought about what to exchange with him?"

"What does he need?"

"Beyonder materials. The higher the Sequence and the rarer, the better. He has recently been looking for Time Grass root powder—Time Grass is a common material for the Marauder Pathway; he used up his stock while helping someone process Marauder potions. How much do you have on hand?"

"I have about ten grams left, enough to prepare two Sequence 9 potions," Lu Li said.

"Take three grams with you. Time Grass powder is not easy to buy on the Tingen market; three grams is enough to make him lend you the alchemy fire."

Old Neil took out a small lead sealed canister from the drawer and pushed it in front of Lu Li. A label was attached to the canister: Time Grass root powder, Level 3 material, keep away from light and moisture.

Lu Li took the sealed canister and put it into his waist pouch. Old Neil picked up the tweezers again, flipped the scale sample over, and suddenly spoke: "That directional mold pattern has stopped growing since all the anchors were purified. Those deleted records you found earlier in the archives, Ince had dispersed and hidden them in the abnormal event archives of different years—he split each one into incomplete fragments. Viewed individually, there is no pattern, but when arranged in chronological order, it forms a complete distribution map of the backup runes."

"Does Dunn know?"

"He knows. Yesterday I handed him the complete, organized map, and he sat in his office flipping through it for a full two hours. After he finished, he said one sentence—'For fifteen years, he signed the shift log every day, and every day's signature overlapped with the anchor locations on the map. I watched his signature for fifteen years and didn't notice.'" Old Neil placed the tweezers beside the tray and took off his deerskin gloves.

"It's not your problem. When Ince was carving the backup runes, he had already figured out the Tingen squad's internal review process. He hid the anchors in the daily maintenance records; every maintenance was a real maintenance, he just carved an extra small rune at the same time. This rune doesn't have any abnormalities when viewed alone, and even a compass can't detect it—because it was embedded into the Sealed Artifact's own spiritual circuitry, just like adding a very low-volume long note to a symphony. Unless you listen to the entire piece from beginning to end, you can't tell that the long note has been there from the start."

Old Neil put the scale sample away into the lead box and locked the lid. "The three-week training starts tomorrow. Since you're on leave, you don't need to go, but if you're free in the afternoon, it would be good to come and take a look."

He picked up the enamel cup on the workbench again; the black tea inside was no longer steaming.